Friday, September 02, 2005

Search war or mob war?

Not sure how he got it, but John Battelle posted an excerpt from Mark Lucovsky's testimony in the Kai-Fu Lee case. It has Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's reaction when Mark Lucovsky told Steve that he was leaving Microsoft for Google:

Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google.

At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."

Al Capone: I want this guy dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on his ashes!

Malone: You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?

When I said the search war was personal, I didn't think it meant this.

Update: This post has been corrected. I originally mistakenly said the statement was from Kai-Fu Lee, not from Mark Lucovsky.

Update: Matt Fletcher at Naive Ameoba made a Flash game called Going Ballmy where you too can throw a chair across the room at a departing Microsoft employee. [via Chris DiBona]